italy on issues impacting food production like climate change. >> "morning joe" starts right now. president obama made it known he wasn't exactly a fan of general flynn's. the question you have to ask, if president obama was concerned about general flynn, why didn't he suspend general flynn's security clearance? additionally why did the obama administration let flynn go to russia for a speaking fee. if that was truly a concern more than just a person that did have bad blood. >> they fired him. they fired him. >> that's the way it works. >> you're fired. that's when omarosa has to go down to the bottom of trump tower and get in the cheesy car you put him in and they drive off into cheese land. and then they come back and

bring that cheese -- >> it's unbelievable. i might, i might get in the car and drive out the driveway. kelly ann, sean spicer, it's becoming close. it's already there actually. i'm just having a hard time bringing myself to say it because he is the white house press secretary, but he literally, every time i hear him talk, it's painful and it's usually not true. anyone disagree? >> they fired him willie geist? why didn't they do anything? barack obama yesterday finally, nice to see the 44th preside of the united states back. you get the news yesterday morning. a source close barack obama whose initials are b.h.o. said, i warned him, told him not to hire him. >> extraordinarily close to barack obama. the question i think for the

white house is given the fact that flynn was fired, given the fact that president obama spoke two days after the election to donald trump and sally united states spoke to the white house council about flynn, why did it take 18 days from the time that they warned he was ripe for blackmail to get rid of him. >> the possibility you have a president that's not a good manager. i've hired a lot of people. you get those kind of warnings, obviously not at the national security level and you do something about it. >> can you imagine getting a warning like that and still moving forward? that's your biggest problem. >> everybody is backing away from him now. >> we said it on the air. >> they all fiercely defended general flynn. they didn't need sally yates' warning. everyone close to donald trump was warning donald trump and everybody around donald trump that was flynn was bad news

before the election, after the election. donald trump was his fiercest advocate. fought like hell for him, more than anybody else. let everybody around him know that flynn was going to be the perch around him. everybody talk about how great general flynn was. the chorus of praise for general flynn around this president was unanimous. >> general flynn was a warmup act during much of the campaign. this is what happens when loyalty croes with paranoia. we all know donald trp vy loyal. the paranoia comes from barack obama and the white house saying beware of general flynn. the facts of this case are such that sean spicer was wrong on two accounts. one, you have to get a renewed security clearance if you're

going to be national security adviser. it's a jump up. that's one thing. >> it's wrong on a million counts, every time he gets up there. >> the second thing is i think, i'm fairly are sure, been told by a couple people, he never told anyone about the russian trips when he was still on the government payroll. >> he didn't tell them he took money from r.t. >> and he was warned. the warnings were still there. sean spicer has an impossible job, sent out every day to defend the indefendable. >> you say i can't do this because this is lying. that guy had a good reputation. it is now ruined. >> david ignatius, what's your biggest takeaway from yesterday? >> the overused word, dramatic testimony, this really was dramatic. i think what really hit me was sally yates saying two things. first, the underlying conduct of

michael flynn and his conversations with ambassador kislyak, the fact that he talked about sanctions against russia on the very day when the obama administration was imposing new sanctions, that was troubling. second, this very strong language that the justice department thought there was an urgent danger that flynn could be compromised, that he could be blackmailed, she wanted the white house to act right away because she thought the russians can use this now. i thought it was pretty stunning to hear her say that. >> let's show that. let's go right to sally yates. >> we began our meeting telling him there had been press counts of statements from the vice president and others that related conduct that mr. flynn had been involved in that we knew not to be the truth. the underlying conduct that general flynn had engaged in was

problematic in and of itself. we were concerned that the american people had been misled about the underlying conduct and what general flynn had done, and additionally, that we weren't the only ones that knew all of this, that the russians also knew about what general flynn had done, and the russians also knew that general flynn had misled the vice president and others. not only did we believe that the russians knew this, but they likely had proof of this information, and that created a compromise situation, a situation where the national security adviser essentially could be blackmailed by the russians. >> david ignatius, she went out and said explicitly yesterday something that had been widely reported, that she approached the white house counsel because she believed sincerely that general flynn could be a target of blackmail given that he had exposed himself that way and he allowed the vice president of the united states to go out and tell untruths which is what brought her to the white house

counsel. what's your best guess about the 18-day gap between when she talked about general flynn's risks and the time he was dismissed? >> i think that's a central mystery now, like the mystery of why donald trump didn't respond to the direct warning from president obama, don't hire this man. it's not wise. sally united states takes this extraordinary step, goes to the white house, brings someone from the national security division, these are the people that find the most secret things in our government and gives this warning. 18 days pass. why? the only answer i think is that donald trump was trying to make up his mind what to do. what do we know that happened in that period? first sally yates, the person who brought this bad news, was fired. she was fired for another reason because she resisted the president's travel ban, but she was fired. in addition, the president ended

up defending mike flynn when he finally decided it was time for him to go. what was it that was limiting trump's reaction. were there issues of his own that he was struggling to think through. did he see this as a democratic attack on him? we just don't know. i think those are the central questions, what was trump thinking? >> lie after lie after lie. >> it's interesting, mika, that donald trump referred to the investigation of general flynn as a witch hunt which explains that even after he has all of this information, even after he fires him himself, he is still for some reason trying to defend this man who did things that were indefensible. >> it does raise questions about the amount of money that trump has probably gotten funded through russia for all of his personal interests. but the bigger issue is every lie chips away at this presidency and every untruth

that sean spicer brings to the table stuttering and bumbling because he's so uncomfortable with himself. i know my little meltdowns make you laugh. they're always right. i'm always right when -- i'm telling you right now, these guys are going to find themselves literally fumbling on their own lies to the point where it brings them down. it's going to start with the press secretary, but it's going to end up on the president's desk. >> beyond the lies, i don't know either what he was struggling. i'm not sure he was seen struggling. it may turn out there was more going on than we know about. at the base of it, what is completely evident is you have a president who is not really competent in the sense of understanding how to deal with information like this and how to make decisions and he just followed the loyalty path without seemingly questioning or being willing to do anything about all these warnings from

serious people. >> david ignatius, do you not hear the same thing i've heard a couple of times -- you live in washington so you might hear it more frequently. one of the problems, one of the central problems with this issue and other issues in the white house is the total chaotic nature around the president. there's no strong chief of staff. there's no strong voices to give him some direction, advice, counsel that he adheres to and this is what happens. >> mike, i do feel that but i felt that especially at the time that these events were happening. the white house is somewhat chaotic now. it was really chaotic back in january. the knives were out. flynn himself was jockeying for position. i went in to interview flynn in this period between when sally yates had delivered her warning and when he was fired, and he was struggling to defend himself, explaining his plans

for the nsc, trying to hold on to that job. i think the white house to be honest seems somewhat better organized today than it did then. the president is somewhat more confident of what he's doing. but this mystery endures, and the president tried to undermine sally yates' credibility in a tweet yesterday before she testified, very defensive reaction. i just don't think that's continuing to be a wise strategy for the white house. this is going to play out. it's serious, the language she used made clear there are legal issues the justice is weighing. >> as pat leahy said, it was childish, a great word for that. >> yesterday morning president trump suggested a question for yates tweeting, ask sally yates under oath if she knows how classified information got into the newspaper soon after she explained it to the white house counsel. senate judiciary chairman chuck grassley obliged. >> next question. have either of you ever been an

anonymous source in a news report about matters relating to mr. trump, his associates or russia's attempt to meddle in the election? >> no. >> absolutely not. >> the other question, what did don mcdan do with information that he got? >> according to published reports, as they say, according to the reporting, he did nothing, and he knew for several days. he did nothing. he's the white house counsel. >> is this a white house, a president more specifically that doesn't want to hear this stuff and makes clear he doesn't want to hear this stuff? >> what president trump did seyed and can say still with some grain of drugt, jim clapper, former head of the dni said there was no collusion between russia and the trump campaign as far as he knows. he said that's probably because he's not privy to the fbi

investigation. he said clearly i have not seen evidence of collusion between the trump campaign and russia. >> trust me, if there were direct evidence of collusion, it would have already been leaked out by now. >> so at times the hearing centered more on sally yates' forced exit from the justice department, senator ted cruz was one of the senators to press yates about her decision not to enforce president trump's controversial immigration ban, a move that ultimately let to her being fired. >> are you familiar with 8 usc section 1182? >> not off the top of my head, no. >> it says, quote, whenever the president finds the entry of any alien or class of aliens in the united states would be detrimental to the interest of the united states he maybe proclamation and for such peesh yod as he shall deem necessary suspend the entry of all aliens or non-aliens as immigrants or non-immigrants or impose any restrictions he may deem appropriate. would you agree that is broad

statutory authorization? >> i would and i'm familiar with that and i'm also familiar with an additional provision that says no person shall receive preference or be discriminated against in issuance of a visa because of race, nationality or place of birth. that i believe was promulgated after the statute you just quoted. >> in the over 200 years of the department of justice history, are you aware of any instance in which the department of justice has formally approved the legality of a policy and three days later the attorney general has directed the department not to follow that policy? >> i'm not. i'm also not aware of a situation where the office of legal counsel was advised not to tell the attorney general about it until after it was over. >> thank you, ms. yates. >> ouch. those are two balls she put over

left field fence. two setups, set it up like perry mason. >> touch them all. >> they were trying to set her up as someone who acted out of politics. >> the travel ban is completely separate from the issue. >> he should have known. that's just -- that's just bad theater, bad politics. he should have known that sally yates was going to hit his hanging curveball 470 feet. you can see while he was setting it up. don't do that, no, no. just talk to her. give her an intentional walk. make the little signal. >> that one didn't break. it was a hanging curveball. but it wasn't just senator cruz. there were other senators in there as someone who acted out

of politics and out of partisanship. she just cited line by line the law under which she acted. she believed the travel ban was unlawful. >> and correctly cited the provision of the law that was implemented after the section that he talked about. >> it's also something that head cruz has done more often than not. he has an intellectual contempt. he thinks he's just the smarter person in the room. >> what's even worse she shows it. it's obvious he has intellectual contempt for everyone in the room. >> david, the takeaway from yesterday. what's the headline? >> i think the headline is this is more trouble for the white house even than they expected. >> in what way? >> i think that the mystery of why donald trump did not act when he was given warnings about mike flynn's behavior is now a

central question. it now goes why did he like to mike pence, the vice president, to why did the president act the way he did. what did trump know about flynn's conversations with kislyak. what was his conversation back in december? i think those are the next set of issues people are going to focus on. >> i think "the washington post" did a survey of how many untruths the president told today and it was an average of 4.9 in the first 100 days. this presidency, you can argue this president is completely incompetent, maybe even has some issues medically, who knows? who knows? this presidency cannot afford anybody weak around him, not one person, and there are several and it's all just pouring out every day and we're becoming desensitized to how bad this is. >> and giving more material to "saturday night live."

>> coming up on "morning joe," former secretary of state condoleezza rice is going to be here onset. plus, the top democrat on the house intel committee, adam schiff, amy klobuchar joining us, bill cassidy who says any health care bill needs to pass what he calls the jimmy kimmel test. first, what's the bill karins test? >> i don't want to hear. a couple dreary maydays. >> a couple? okay, may, the entire month. >> he doesn't even know what month it is. >> when is it going to warm up? >> tuesday next week. >> what? you don't know that. you're just making stuff up. >> it sounded credible, didn't it? i learned by listening to you guys. >> like spicer. no, actually he doesn't. >> this is denver yesterday, the hail storm over the top of the city dropped down baseball-sized hail in some areas.

some people were smart and took their cars under the shelters. other vehicles were not so lucky. the hailstones that came down, baseball-sized, were enough to smash through windshield, even the state trooper's car there. you can see the size as they ripped through. today, another chance of severe storms. this will be in the same area south of denver including amarillo, west texas and areas of new mexico. joe was talking about thechill. it's 34 right n in buffalo, 43 in chicago and 37 in detroit. so the chill is with us from chicago to boston. it's going to stay with us probably right through the upcoming weekend. next week does look like we finally kick out of this. it's not fair because we are summer-like from memphis, little rock, kansas city. atlanta at 5. raleigh only 66, cleveland at 56. this continues into the upcoming weekend. d.c. on friday, 59 degrees. that's jacket weather definitely for everyone when south korea, you're wearing a t-shirt at 92

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president trump's top military and foreign policy advisers recommended sending several thousand more troops to afghanistan, according to a report from "the washington post." the plan which would also authorize the pentagon and not the white house to set troop levels apparently still needs to be approved by the president, and he is expected to make a final decision before may 25th, the nato meeting in brussels. it also echoes what the top american commander in afghanistan, general john nicholson, told congress back in february, that he needed thousands more troops to break what he called a stalemate.

>> david ignatius, eight years ago we had pretty heated debates around this table about whether president obama, the new president, should triple the number of troops in afghanistan. then we were complaining we had already been in that war for eight years, and this would hold us there even longer. we're 16 years in now. the generals on the ground say they need the support. are we just going to have to have a reset in thinking and look at afghanistan as our new korea, that we're going to be there for 50 years? >> this is now america's longest war and it falls to president trump to think, is there a way to break the stalemate that his commander, general nicholson, has described. 3,000 more troops, which is what they're discussing doesn't seem like a force that's going to accomplish what 100,000 american troops which was our peak number back in 2011, couldn't accomplish. i'm struck by the fact that general h.r. mcmaster who really

struggled with this afghanistan problem as much as anyone in the military when he was there under general petraeus is now going to be the key decision maker. it's said that he feels that this augmentation of troops makes sense. i think it's a tough decision for president trump. he talks about wanting a winning strategy, but very few people who look at afghanistan think there's a win other than finally getting some diplomatic process and coalition that draws the taliban in. >> mike, we've been there for 16 years, and the afghanistan army still can't fight for themselves. we're going to have to make the decision. apparently culturally they are incapable of doing it because they're too divided, too many tribes or something. if the president puts more troops in, we're going to have

to realize that we've got to -- we're going to be there for 50 years. >> the issue of 3,000 troops -- >> it stops being a war and starts being an occupation. >> it might buttress the urban areas of afghanistan. david, one of the points here it seems, perhaps the second most dangerous country in the world is pakistan, and our relationship with pakistan and our troops in afghanistan, that seems to be a never-ending issue. what can be done about pakistan? >> bolstering pakistan so it's more confident, it doesn't seek to use afghanistan as a kind of defensive reserve has been the biggest puzzle for american commanders. general nicholson is as good a commander as we've had there. i first met him ten years ago in the jill lal bad area. i think the problem is the

afghan government and the army just has not gotten sufficient traction in the country. so that leaves you with the necessity as the obama administration concluded of seeking a political settlement with pakistan's help. how do you makehe pakistanis process?t enough to back that that was the question five years ago, ten years ago. it's still a question and now on president trump's plate. >> hopefully his foreign policy team with take over. steve rattner, your chart is looking at the budget deal and what president trump got for defense. >> the budget deal got lost in health care and a lot of other stuff going on at the time. there's something very significant in what happened and that decision that relates to what the president may or may not be able to get done going forward. if you look at the result of the whole thing, the president asked for something like $32 billion of extra spending for defense, and he got roughly half of it. in fact, the half he got was put

into a special separate fund called the overseas contingency fund which means it isn't in the base budget so it doesn't necessari necessarily become part of next year's budget. on the discretionary spending side, all those programs he wanted to cut by $15 billion, he got exactly zero. the $540 billion in the obama request is still the $540 billion. he wanted, for example, to cut a billion and a half out of nah which actually increased by $2 billion. he wanted to sezero out public broadcasting. >> he wanted to cut 30%, 40% of the state department. you're basically saying all the non-defense discretionary spending held. >> and why did it hold? it held because for this kind of change you need 60 votes in the senate. as long as the democrats hold together, they can block it. in the next budget -- this budget he wanted to cut $15 billion. in the next budget he wants to

cut $50 billion. >> he knows that's not going to happen. >> i want to make sure our viewers know it's not going to happen. >> you have republicans coming on like tom cole saying the cuts to the nih were absutely perverse. they were never goingohappen. again, you wonder whether they're just putting it out. >> the nih enjoys special affection -- >> 40% from the state department, that's not going to happen. >> that's not going to happen. >> none of this stuff is going to happen. >> the point is, democrats can really block anything from happening. so we could have a budget next year that has almost no cuts. while it's right for those of us who care about this to worry about it, i i think what we saw in this whole exercise is the fact it's going to be very hard for the president to make situation any can't cuts in these domestic programs. >> what's so laughable about the whole thing, anybody who knows anything about the budget, anything about the budget knows ha the main drivers of long-term

debt are medicare, medicaid, social security, defense and interest on the budget and none of that was touched. well, he wants to slash medicaid, of course. defense spending went up. interest rates are going to start going up. the problem becomes more difficult. all these jackals running around on capitol hill that say they're going to balance the budget by cutting $15 from big bird are just lying to their constituents, lying to themselves, discretionary domestic spending is not going to even dent the national budget -- >> to your point, what's happening now is that the deficit is starting to increase again because of the pressures that you were talking about from all the entitlements programs. >> all right, coming up, politico says he looks and tweets like a man running for president. we'll ask senator chris murphy about that and get his reaction to yesterday's briefing on

capitol hill. >> mr. president. >> former justice department spokesman matt miller. "morning joe" is coming right back. you're going to be hanging out in here. so if you need anything, text me.

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one of the questions that mr. mcgann asked me when i went over the second day was essentially why does it matter to doj if one white house official lies to another white house official? so we explained to him it was a whole lot more than that and went back over the same concerns that we raised with them the prior day, that the concern first about the underlying conduct itself, that he had lied to the vice president and others, the american plic had been misled, and importantly that every time this lie was repeated and the misrepresentations were getting more and more specific as they were coming out, every time that happened, it increased the compromise. to state the obvious, you don't want your national security advisor compromised with the russians. >> joining us, member of the foreign relations committee democratic senator chris murphy of connecticut. here onset, former chief justice

department spokesperson, now an msnbc justice and security analyst matthew miller. >> let's start with chris murphy. chris, has there ever been a president from the state of connecticut? >> stop it. leave him alone. >> that's a great intro. no, i don't think there has been. >> how exciting, if politico is right, there may be one in 2020. congratulations. >> i've got re-election in between now and then. >> okay. don't look past your next appointment, as they say. let's get serious here. what was your takeaway from all the testimony yesterday from sally yates? >> i do think it's stunning that sally yates had to explain to the white house the problem of having a national security adviser who was compromised, lying internally to his colleagues and had deep and long connections to the russians that may allow them to try to turn that to their benefit, the fact

the white house didn't understand that i think should remain concerning. the timeline now has a little more meat on it. the bottom line is that the white house waited until there was public reporting on the fact that flynn was lying that he had these connections with the white house, and had that not come out in public, michael flynn might still be the national security adviser today. they may have ignored those warnings from the attorney general's office and it speaks to how ethically compromised this entire white house operation remains even today. >> senator murphy, it's willie geist. good to see you. the central question in the hearing yesterday was were there ties between the trump campaign, direct ties and russia. former dni jim clapper said i can't make that claim, i can't find a straight line of collusion between the trump campaign and russia. no one has said that on an official level yet. do you believe there's been collusion between the trump campaign and russia from what

you know? >> i don't know. we certainly don't have a smoking gun today. it seems that the story is unfolding only in one direction. every few weeks we get new evidence that suggests that there was more, not less coordination than we previously thought between the trump campaign and the russian government. the new element today is you have a few individuals, michael flynn amongst them, who might be in serious legal trouble. that tends to be when the story comes out, when you have an individual on the inside of something like this, in order to get out of personal legal liability starts to fill in details that weren't previously available. we have some new wrinkles that may get us closer to the truth and we have congressional investigations that didn't exist six months ago or four months ago that also might get closer to the truth. i have a feeling there's a number of additional chapters here that haven't been told. today we don't have that direct clear evidence of collusion between trump himself, high levels of the campaign and the

russian government. we certainly seem to be getting closer to that moment. >> matthew, you worked with sally yates. tell us about her. >> i think what people saw yesterday was what we saw yesterday, she's fearless, non-partisan. someone who came up as an assistant u.s. attorney. >> wasn't she appointed by bob barrr. >> she's so impressive. >> a republican. >> not a liberal republican. >> worked for bob barr, prosecuted the mayor of atlanta and in jail. prosecuted terrorists, the olympic park bombing. a career person who became the deputy attorney general and she's fearless. >> you brought up something very interesting in the testimony. it does raise questions about why she was fired. if you take the sequence of events leading up to her firing, we're all looking, of course, at that executive order, but she

was giving the white house bad news they didn't want to hear and about a followup meeting they really didn't want to hear. >> on the day she was fired. >> i think in every one of these big scandals, there's a moment when the american public says can i really trust the president? in watergate, it was an 18 zsh minute gap in the tape. here it's the 18-day gap, it only happened when the washington post reported it. you have to ask, given that they didn't elect to fire him after she gave that warning, why did they get rid of her? was the immigration order the reason or an excuse. >> david ignatius is in washington. senator, he has a question for you. >> senator murphy, you travel a lot around the world, and i want to know what you're hearing when we have here in washington a situation like this where a former acting attorney general says our national security

adviser was subject to blackmail by the russians. what do people think when they hear that? >> what you're seeing around the world is many of our allies and free agents slowly walking away from the united states. that's happening for a number of reasons. first they don't see any consistency in our foreign policy. it's foreign policy by improvisation, these scandals that continue to unfold don't help. then they see an intentionality to the lack of personnel in the state department. no assistant secretaries covering the world at all. normally when something like this happens, you have a high-level state department official going out and talking to world leaders trying to defend the united states. we don't have anyone above that level. there's a lot of head scratching about why the united states doesn't have the capacity to defend itself. why it's not out there trying to explain what's happening. that seems today not to be a coincidence, a mistakement it

seems to be intentional that this administration is just withdrawing from maybing our case around the world. >> matt, we've been speculating this morning as to why the president didn't fire flynn right away, whether it was incompetence, whether it was some kind of loyalty or whether there was something else going on here that we don't yet know. what's your theory as to why this went on for 18 days like that? >> that's really the central question that's hard to answer. it could be that the president is loyal to mike flynn, he was his buddy on the campaign trail or it could be something more nefarious. it could be mike flynn when he had those conversations wasn't freelancin freelancing. he might have been acting with the authorization of the president-elect. it could be related to the campaign. >> wouldn't you sum it up as arrogance, incompetence and possibly something nefarious. >> exactly. that might explain why trump to this day is unwilling to separate himself from mike

flynn. >> he psychologically can't. >> mike flynn has legal jeopardy, under investigation by the justice department. if you're in that situation that trump is, the last thing you want is someone who is in legal jeopardy suddenly flipping on you. >> you think we'll find out that nefarious part, if there's a nefarious part, will we find it out? >> we will if the department of justice has enough evidence to bring charges against mike flynn and they come to his lawyer and say talk or get indicted. >> chris muhy, should the senate grant immunity to michael flynn, the immunity he's asking for right now? >> i think it's hard for me to know that without understanding what he may be offering in terms of evidence of collusion with the russian government. so i don't think i can make a call on that. i think one additional thing to think about is we know, as we've said a couple times, about michael flynn, because of "the washington post." i think there is an outstanding question as to whether there are other michael flynns.

are there other individuals inside the white house who have had conversations with the russians that the white house knows about and they simply haven't been let go only because the public hasn't found out about it. we also have to ask if we're just scratching the surface of individuals in the white house who have been knowingly compromised through their connections to the russians. >> who knows? probably important to point out that from day one you were saying on this show and to trump's face privately, get rid of flynn, he will be a black eye on this presidency. you tried. senator chris murphy, thank you very much -- >> by the way, fyi, if you're following chris murphy on twitter, you can go to his twitter account or just do #46. >> see you later, guys. >> i don't know what baseball player is 46. huge fan. >> cute. still ahead, former secretary of state condoleezza rice joins the table. first, as the republicans work to repeal and replace obamacare, you jean robinson says there are

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all right, stop. >> i'm just going to have to check that out. how are you guys doing today? as senate lawmakers dig into health care reform bill -- good luck with that -- leaders are working to lower expectations of getting the bill through the upper chamber any time soon. >> we're going to have to satisfy 51 senators. i can't tell you how long that's going to take. we don't have any arbitrary deadline. that's not to say we won't be very active and engaged. we will. we are. but it's going to take some time to get that consensus. >> or we don't like you, house. >> yeah. i'm not saying it's about senator cornyn but seriously --

>> a disgust. >> a brother in college looking at his kid brother in middle school saying -- >> send it to tate to the house >> that's a really great painting you made. i've got to go back to finishing my -- >> hey, kids, this is the city. >> now it's time for the grown-ups to take over. >> had they actually done a grown-up job in the house of passing a real bill, that would have been fine. >> bring in gene. >> anyway. >> gene robinson. you write in "the washington post" that republicans are accidently paving the way for single-payer health care and write in part, this. sooner or later, we will have universal, single-payer health care in this country. sooner if republicans succeed in destroying the affordable care act. later, if they fail. the repeal and replace bill pass bid the house last week is nothing short of an abomination.

its so bad that republicans can defend it only by blowing smoke and telling lies. i can't think of a more effective way to drive the nation toward a single-payer system. in their fool iv haste to get rid of obamacare, republican ideologues are paving the way for something they will like much less. the country will be much better off, though. every other rich industrialized nation has found that truly universal health coverage is like what churchill said about democracy. it's the worst system except for all the others that have been tried. >> gene, one correction. i think it's an important correction to make in this. we already have universal health care coverage. the problem is tt so much of it is driven by emergency room visits. >> right. >> which drive up the costs, which are more inefficient and when conservatives say, oh, we shouldn't have universal -- we already have it. we just have it in the most inefficient way on the planet. >> exactly. >> which reminds me after

obamacare was passed, we had a rock ribbed conservative his entire career saying if i knew it was going to end up like this, i would have supported the public option, which is sort of what you're arguing right here. >> you know, exactly. look, our health care system, you're right. people get treated. they get treated at the emergency room, which is just multiples. it's ridiculously more expensive than it would be to do a same program of universal health care. and that's been obvious for years. and we need to address that. we need to address it frontally. and this -- you know, again, the word affiliatebomination keeps o mind that the house passed. it's a stark reminder of where we are and if we continue to head in that direction, i really do think people will take a look at single payer and say, look,

we've got to rationalize this and make it make sense. >> steve rattner. >> we have a rubix cube. obamacare is working but it's complicated. we have this other thing, this abomination coming out of the house. single-payer has appeal. but we have republican president, republican senate, republican house, no immediate prospect of those changing. however desirable it is, how realistic is it to have single-payer insurance in our lifetime? >> in our lifetime i think it's realistic. in the next couple of years, it's not realistic. it's really only realistic, obviously, when you have a congress and president that are willing to go in that direction. now, we have a president w has, in the past, supported universal health care. and said everybody should have it. who knows what direction he would head if congress presented him with a proper program.

this congress is not going to do that. but this congress is going to have to do something because they're not going to get through what the house passed. they're either going to have to fix obamacare and work with it and make it function better or they're going to have to come up with something else. or they're not going to be in congress anymore. i mean, you know, there's an election coming up next year, and it's -- there's going to be a reckoning, i think. if you own the health care issue, that's hazardous to your health as a political party. >> there's going to be a health care crisis coming up over the next 12 to 24 months and the republicans are either going to have to do something about it or it's going to collapse. and then both parties are going to have to come together and do something dramatic. >> yeah. >> and what you're talking about may be what they end up on. >> it may be. by bu why do we have to have a crisis when we see a problem? >> because it's washington.

>> because it's trump. eugene robinson, thank you very much. we'll be reading yore post. >> see you soon. senators from both sides of the aisle, amy clobichar and bill cassidy join the conversation. first, she was national security adviser and top diplomat during the two wars that followed. condoleezza rice joins us here on set. we'll be right back with much more "morning joe." ♪ ♪ ♪ i'm drkelsey mcneely and some day you might be calling me an energy farmer. ♪ energy lives here.

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i think every american should be concerned about what the russians did. not some 400-pound guy sitting on a bed or any other country. welcome back to "morning joe." it is tuesday, may 9th. with us, we have mike barnicle, david ignatius, columnist for "the washington post" and joining the conversation, former secretary of state condoleezza rice, author of the new book, "democracy: stories from the long road to freedom." >> what timing. >> it's always great to have

stories about democracy. >> it is. >> many have consider this had administration pushing back against democratic institutions over the past 110, 115 days or at least advisers going out and saying extraordinary, temperate things, suggesting that the executive branch is not subject to judicial review. how are we doing as a country? how did our founding fathers do? >> the founding fathers understood that executive authority had to be constrained and they were determined to do it. they built a congress and now we have 535 people. we have courts that will strike down the president's decrees. we have governors, by the way, 50 of them, and state legislators and i think our president today is learning that those constraints are real, that whatever you say in an election campaign, those constraints are going to be there. and, by the way, this is a president who has never even sniffed government before. never been a part of government.

maybe it was a bit of a surprise that you have all these independent power centers. it's not like running a company. >> he said it's harder than he thought. >> right. and i think it looks easy from the outside. i have even been -- i served presidents who were in and around government. i think even they found it -- particularly george w. bush, found the constraints to be more difficult than even he anticipated. >> we always talk around the table. we've all seen it. you've seen it, too. everybody walks into the white house and they think, we are the first to walk through these gates. like we've cracked the code. >> right. >> explain how quickly you find out that, actually, as i once told trump, the most powerful person in washington is the senate minority leader. that's kind of hard to explain from a distance. >> it's very hard to explain from a distance. you walk in. the first thing that happens to you, of course, on that first day, you walk into the white house and they've cleared out everything. there's nothing there because you've had a change of

administration. and it feels lonely, i think, for the president of the united states. i think it feels constrained and that they're in a gilded cage. maybe the day you're inaugurated you're the smartest being ever. suddenly, how did we possibly let that person -- it's a hard job. >> of all the traits that a president have going in, what's the most important trait, personality trait? >> i think the most important trait is honesty, with himself first and foremost, about what's really going on around him. and then to have people that can reinforce that. it's also the case that when you're at the top of the country that way, finding people who are really going to walk in and say, you know, mr. president, you don't look so good today and you really didn't do that so well. and i think that's -- being able to listen to that criticism, whether you like it or not, is

pretty important. >> so, i'm curious. has this administration reached out to you for help? >> i've had an opportunity to meet with the president. i've known vice president pence for a long time. and i was going to see him. and i got a call and said it would be nice to see the president as well. we had a really good session. he was asking really good questions. i think he is trying to figure out exactly -- at that point, he was about to see the chinese president and so he was figuring out a kind of road map for how to deal with the chchinese. i think every president has a learning curve. when you come in with no government experience, that learning curve is steeper. >> i'm curious, did they want you on board in any way? >> well, i live in california and said to everybody, if there's anything i can do to help the president from california, i'm happy to do it, from there. >> got it. okay. and last question, i agree, the pillars of democracy are being put to the test and we're okay.

i get that. >> we're fine. >> i know you want to -- at the same time, do you think there is a concern that we are being desensitized to the lev of mistrust that i developing within this presidency and the administration, given some of the untruths that have come out of it, and some of the problems that have emerged because of those untruths? do you think there are some dangers to that? >> i think we have been on a kind of downward spiral in terms of the trust in american institutions for a long time. this is not about this president. this goes back a ways. and one of the challenges with democracy is that it's a system that's focused on a knife's edge between chaos on the one hand and too much authority on the other. democracy is that sweet spot. but people have to trust the institutions. and that, to me, is the biggest challenge that we have of the and we've had that challenge for a while. >> what do you about that at this point in not just the

breakdown in institutions but the way it seems the country has run to its polar opposites, ideologically, culturally, back in november between people who supported hillary clinton and donald trump. how do you mend that in the country -- not just at the top, in the white house, but in the country. >> somehow we've got to refocus on what it is that brings us together. american identity is actually pretty fragile because we don't share religion, ethnicity, ideology. we are united by this idea that you can come from humble circumstances and do great things. one thing that broke down and one reason you got the election that you did -- as my one friend calls it, do you hear me now election. too many people felt that that american dream, as we called it, isn't there for them. i would refocus on national project. education, the development of human potential, development of job skills. because it sounds, in some ways,

almost too pragmatic. but when people have the sense that they have control of their future, when they have the sense that they really can come from humble circumstances and do great things, they are then part of this democracy in a way that they're not when they're left out. the other thing is we have to talk to each other. i sit out at stanford and tell me students if you sit in a room that say amen to everything you say, find other company. because when you then encounter people who think differently, you think they're either venal or stupid. we spend too much time with people who think like us. >> we have a new president, an administration largely new to any form of governing. we have a country that's exhausted from a long, long war. and we have it all framed up with make america great again and america first. do you worry about the problem

of this increasing emphasis on withdrawing from the globe, from withdrawing from the world, from ignoring the problems in africa, given our history of doing good throughout the world am. >> i think america is an idea and that idea can't be true for us and not for them. america is best when it's leading from power and principle. it's best when it's leading from compassion. yes, i worry about that. again, we've been on that course for a while. look, i take some responsibility. i understand that after the wars and terrorism and 9/11 and the response to it, americans feel that they're a bit tired. let the world do its thing. we'll do ours. but americans also don't like what we see when we withdraw. they don't like seeing people beheaded on tv by isis they don't like seeing girls kidn kidnapped in boko haram. this president didn't like seeing syrian babies choking on

chemical gas. and so america, i think, has a kind of moral dna deep inside and it's the goal of leadership to bring it out. it's also the case that we have benefited when decent governments are in place. we took a chance after world war ii. germany, never to threaten its neighbors again, because it's a democratic germany. jap japan, never to threaten its neighbors again, because it's a democratic japan. they don't hire child soldiers and send them into war. they don't attack their neighbors. they don't traffic in human beings. i think there's both a moral case and a practical case for supporting the aspirations of people who want to have the rights that we do. >> do you ever want to be president? >> no, i don't have that dna. >> you have four types of governments that can lead -- or situations that can lead to

democracy. the first type totalitarian collapse, afghanistan, iraq and libya. we were just talking earlier this morning about the fact that we're 16 years in afghanistan. and you still toent have a government or a military force that can stand up on its own. did we underestimate 16 years ago howriti culture was to building a democratic institution? >> well,et me say a couple of things. the first one of the reasons -- one of the things i hope this book will do is to tell people that democracy promotion is not really like what we did in afghanistan and iraq. we had security problems there. afterwards, we decided we had to try to help them get on a democratic path. i would never say to the president of the united states, use military force to bring democracy to afghanistan and iraq. that would have been a misuse of military force. now, therefore, the most

stressing circumstances. you've decapitated a regime. there's no institutions underneath. and it takes a really, really long time to build anything. most democracy promotion cases are a lot less stressing. what we did in colombia, what we did -- >> in afghanistan we're now hearing about more troops going there. >> i understand that. but it's really important that americans not be confused about this point. now as to how long it takes, yes, i know the president is going to look at other options in afghanistan. he ought to. but let's not forget that the process of building democracy is a really hard and long one. >> right. >> i was testifying once before congress and somebody criticized the afghan constitution because it said we will follow both sharia law and human rights and individual liberties. they said what a terrible compromise. i said not half as bad as what made my ancestors three-fifths

of a man in the american constitution. these things take time and we can't get impatient with people trying to build governments. >> the question has to do with culture. i'm curious whether you believe some kuls are more prone to accept democracy and others. you brought up germany, japan. >> right. >> let's add afghanistan to that. those are three different countries from three different parts of the world. japan, four or five years of mcarthur, germany -- >> the mazings thing is when we can't explain it, we say it's can ultimate. >> i'm just asking you, though -- >> no, no, i understand. >> do you think culture plays an impact -- >> i'm really speaking to my colleag colleagues am politics who describe everything as culture. latin americans, well, they preferred men on horseback. well now there's brazil and

chile and colombia. well, africans, they were too tribal. but, of course, there's ghana. well, you know, blacks in america, they were too child-like to care about that thing called the vote. so we have this tendency when we want to explain why something isn't happening immediately to say it must be culture. i think people's experiences, their history, their fears and their aspirations, if that's what we mean by culture, yes, it has an effect. but to say because they have those experiences, that history, those aspirations and those fears they're not capable of self governance, that's what i object to. >> david ignatius is still in washington, i believe. are you there? >> yes, i am. >> thank god. it's a relief. question for the secretary? >> madam secretary, you're one of the country's leading experts on russia. you speak russian. i want to ask you, because we're all thinking about it today. what on earth is vladimir putin

thinking, and the kremlin, as he watches sally yates on television, and jim clapper, talking about the russian covert action? what would they think about that? >> let me first state i'm appalled by what the russians did and should find a way ultimately to punish it. vladimir putin is getting tremendous satisfaction watching us tear apart our own system. he is an eye for an eye kind of person. so weuestioned -- specifically, hillary clinton questioned the legitimacy of his election in 2012. now he's going to show us that he can question or he can throw doubt about the legitimacy of our elections. and i would have preferred, for the psychology of it, to say we know you did it and at a time of our choosing, we will find a way to punish that. but, oh, by the way, we have absolute confidence in our democratic processes. we have absolute confidence in what happened in our elections

and to take away from him that psychic satisfaction of watching us spin around about our own legitimacy and our own institutions. >> was this interference personal for him? jim clapper said yesterday in sworn testimony that, yes, russia interfered and, yes, they interfered on behalf of hillary clinton, that they had information on the republican party that they didn't release because they preferred donald trump, the russian government did. what would drive that in vladimir putin? >> there's a little bit of a leap in logic. and i want to be careful about this. i do think that there was great animosity toward secretary clinton. i do think that they interfered in the election. but they've been interfering and trying to interfere for many, many, many years in our elections. this is just a particularly effective way to do it. cyber security is a new tool, in a sense, in a way to do it. i would be careful jumping to the conclusion that they wanted to elect somebody.

i can imagine that anybody who was opposing secretary clinton might have been their preference. so i want to be a little careful in the wording here. but i do think that there's no doubt that they wanted to cast doubt on what we were doing. i worry a little bit when we start too much judging motives beyond that. you hoe, we didn't know -- our intelligence services didn't know that putin was about we didn't know that hwasbout dp troops into syria. i'm a little not so confident about when we start -- precise way. >> believe for putin it was a personal grudge against hillary clinton and not some larger plan to elect donald trump? >> i think he has wanted to interfere for a long time. i think hillary clinton gave him more reason to want to do that because she was -- not because she was hillary clinton. she was the vehicle for having criticized his elections as

illegitimate. and i don't want to jump from that to he wanted, therefore, to elect someone else. again, i repeat, he is an eye for an eye person, right? this is about punishment of americans who he believes have questioned his lenlt massy as president of russia. >> all right. this is absolutely riveting. speaking with former secretary of state condoleezza rice. we'll talk about your book when we come back and ask her about the other major global threat, north korea. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. russia's influence activities in the run-up to the 2016 election constituted the high water mark of their long-running efforts to disrupt and influence our elections and i believe they are now emboldened to continue such activities in the future, both here and around the world and to do so even more intensely.

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we began our meeting, telling him that there had been press accounts of statements from the vice president and others that related conduct that mr. flynn had been involved in, that we knew not to be the truth. the underlying conduct that general flynn had engaged in was problematic in and of itself. we were concerned that the american people had been misled about the underlying conduct and what general flynn had done. and, additionally, that we weren't the only ones that knew all of this, that the russians also knew about what general flynn had done and the russians also knew that general flynn had misled the vice presidentnd others. not only did we believe that the russians knew this, but that they likely had proof of this information. and that created a compromised situation, a situation where the national security adviser, essentially, could be blackmailed by the russians.

>> so, our show full of formidible women continues. condoleezza rice is still with us, out with a new book, "democracy: stories from the long road to freedom." >> what was your takeaway from yesterday's meeting? >> i didn't learn a great deal that was new but it does suggest that there was a lot that was not fully understood or perhaps fully assimilated by the white house. but, you know, look, the good thing is that they've got a great national security adviser now. >> they do. >> in h.r. mcmaster and people can move on. >> can you imagine the scenario like this playing out in george wnc w. bush's administration? >> every white house has its own character and its own -- >> that was careful. come on now. >> but this white house -- >> i don't know. i'm really not going to speculate because i remember when people would say, well, you should have known that and i

would think, well, you weren't inside, actually listening to the conversations that we had. and so i'm not going to speculate about what they should or should not have done. >> what's been your reaction to the staffing cuts at the state department, the lack of under support for the secretary of state? >> let me say first about the budget numbers. it's, of course, the president proposes but it's the congress that's going to authorize. i think we'll have a debate about what those numbers really look like. secretary tillerson, rex tillerson is a very smart guy and i suspect there are some efficiencies to be had in the department. i tell you, i think the numbers have grown significantly since i was secretary. i looked at the overall totals of people in the state department and thought, well, it seems like it was smaller. so, maybe there has been some increasing of numbers that can be dealt with. i hope it's done with a scalpel and not with a bludgeon.

it's already pretty lean but there may be other ways to reorganize the department better. i'm a big believer in efficiencies. i made budget cuts at stanford. nobody ever says that's a great idea. >> thank you. >> so i'm sympathetic to what rex is going through. >> just going back to your book for a moment, madam secretary, that type one you have in this "democracy," totalitarian collapse, afghanistan, iraq and libya. we've just crossed 14 years since the united states went into iraq in march of 2003. as you look at your description of it, institutional void, little that can channel the unleashed passions and prejudices of the population, did the united states understand that well enough when it went to iraq? in other words, it's easy to cut off the head but what follows is the hard part. >> i think we believed that cutting off the head there might be something underneath.

for instance, i remember a couple of days after the successful military part of it, we were looking for the oil workers. where were they? we thought after you cut off the head of the ministry of the oil, there would still be civil people who were working there, civil service people who were working there. and they kind of disappeared, too. so, yeah, i think the complexities, perhaps, we didn't quite understand. i say in the book, we did some things that made it worse. by disbanding the army, which might have been one institution that could have helped us. we didn't really engage the tribes in the way that we should have early on. we managed somehow to make them our enemies early on. later on, they were allies and that made a difference. you don't want to use military force to bring democracy. once you've dealt with the security situation, though, it's going to be tough. and i think in iraq it's still a

story to be told. they do have a prime minister who is accountable. they do have a legislature that's trying to work it out. they do have a military that's fighting alongside us or we're advising in the fight for isis. i would rather be iraqi than syrian. at least they don't have a government that's throwing barrel bombs and chemical weapons at its people. >> a lot of people are saying right now that the rise of autocrats across the globe seems to be the trend. >> i don't think democracy is in decline. i think the reason we feel that way is it looked for a while like it was a straight line. straight line progress. everything seemed to be moving in the right direction, especially after the collapse of the soviet union, all those new democracies that used to be communist countries. and then you had, in 2005, in the arab world, you had reforms, purple finger revolution in iraq. it looked like things were moving in the right direction. turkey was moving in the right

direction. and we've had a little bit -- >> setbacks with turkey over the past decade. >> that's a big setback, yeah. >> yeah. >> when people used to ask me, what would a democratic middle east look like, i would say it's going to look like turkey. they had made a lot of progress. i don't think the story is yet done in turkey. when you look at that referendum that erdogan carried out it wasn't an overwhelming victory for him. >> may not have been a victory at all. >> it probably wasn't. one reason he was seeking votes in netherlands and other places was he wasn't quite sure. turkey's not quite done. >> same thing, seems general nicholson will get 3,000 troops in afghanistan, in the same vain in iraq, the way we lunge into these countries. could you give a grade to pakistan as an ally? what would you give it? >> what's in the middle? >> c. >> yeah. >> why don't we do pass/fail?

>> incomplete. >>oby gives grades anymore. yeah, comple. i like incomplete. i like incomplete. >> we all get a trophy . >> there is no doubt that pakistan has internal issues. i still think that pakistan is not the stalwart fighter against, particularly, the taliban in that area between afghanistan and pakistan. but pakistan is a little bit more stable than it has been in a number of years. maybe there's something. but the relationship with pakistan is kind of like a critically ill patient. you get up every day. you take the pulse. you deal with whatever fever has set in overnight and try to keep it alive for the next day. and that's how i thought about pakistan when i was there. it's a relationship you've got to have, but it is tough. >> breaking news from ""the wall street journal." i'll let you -- >> oh, moon jae-in. >> who wants warmer ties with

north korea. david ignatius to you. >> i wanted to ask secretary rice about north korea. ma'am secretary, you struggled with the north korean program during your time as secretary. president trump has chosen to work very closely with china and xi swrchlt inpijinping in deali with north korea. how would you rate his policy and do you worry he's leaning too much on china in this current set of diplomacy? >> i think what they're trying to do -- and, by the way, i think they're doing as well as anybody could. this is just a really hard problem. i think they are trying to incent the chinese to change their view of this. the chinese have always been more worried about the collapse of the regime than a nuclear north korea. they've been unwilling to do tough things with the regime because it might collapse the regime. then you have refugees flows,

long, unstable border. i think the administration is trying to say, that's not your choice anymore. the choice is do the tough things with the north koreans or we will have to do somng cae no american president is going to let reckless, slightly unhinged north korean leader get a nuclear weapon capable of reaching the united states. so they're trying to change the chinese calculus. that's an important thing to do. i think they're getting the rest of the international community to do tougher sanctions. although this is the most sanctioned regime in the world. and then they're going to keep the military option on the table, which you have to. now, what happens in south korea, what happens happened in south korea will complicate things. the regime in south korea does want, quote, better relations with north korea. does that mean that they're going to start reaching out to the north koreans with trade deals? are they going to make it harder to isolate the north korean regime? how are they going to react to the positioning of missile defenses in south korea, thaad,

which would protect south korea, should we have to do something in terms of the military strike? i think we all knew it was likely you would have this outcome in south korea. it does now further complicate what is already a really hard situation. >> madam secretary, the book is democracy. thank you so much for being here for it. i do want you, though, just to send a message to our children, to our friends, to people who watch this show every day who may be cynical about this country and this democracy and just talk about your journey as a little girl from birmingham, alabama, to where you are now. >> america isn't perfect. and it likely will never be but, boy, it's come a long way. i was born in segregated birmingham, alabama. couldn't go to a restaurant or movie theater with my parents. my father couldn't register to vote in 1952 in birmingham.

and when i stood in the ben franklin room to take the oath of office to that same constitution that konted my ancestors once as three-fifths of a man, i stood there to be sworn in by a jewish woman supreme court justice and i looked up at that portrait and thought what would old ben think about this? probably would think it's a little strange. it is an american story, step-by-step progress to make we the people more inclusive. we were granted great institutions by our founding fathers. i say to my students and young people now, don't give up on american democracy. too many people before you, too many ancestors before you fought the greatest odds to keep this great democratic experience alive and now it's yours. and if you don't protect it and you don't defend it and you don't work for it, you get the democracy that you deserve. so to friends and allies, i would say america is still a work in progress and that's the

good news. >> the book is "democracy: stories from the long road to freedom." condoleezza rice, thank you so much for being on show this morning. that was incredible. >> my pressure. thank you. the question that al franken asked sally yates that she refused to answer. and senator amy klobuchar asked questions as well. we'll get her takeaway as "morning joe" continues. david. what's going on? oh hey! ♪ that's it? yeah. ♪ everybody two seconds! ♪ "dear sebastian, after careful consideration of your application, it is with great pleasure that we offer our congratulations

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joining us now, senator amy klobuchar. very gooo have you on the show. >> thank you. >> i feel like women rule the day today. sally yates, how did she do? >> she was so amazing. she was so prepared. i especially enjoyed her conversation with senator cruz, explaining the day she was fired from the justice department and the discussion about russia, really laying out this was not just a heads up she gave the white house. these were formal meetings in

which she warned them that general flynn had been compromised in a big way. >> thisn those heads up that she disclosed that were given to the white house, what did we learn about exactly how the trump administration is characterizing everything pertaining to michael flynn? >> what we saw was that this wasn't just some casual mention at a cocktail party. she gave very formal notice and both she and former director clapper made it clear when i asked them, when you say one thing on a tape and then you lie to the vice president and say something publicly, couldn't that be material for blackmail? and they both definitively said yes, it is. i think that's what we have to remember here. they decided to keep someone on for 18 days and, in fact, two days after having this warning, allowed him to sit in on an hour-long telephone call between the president of the united states and vladimir putin. this is just not something that

anyone can imagine that we should be doing when we have a foreign power that 17 intelligence agencies have said have tried to influence our democracy. >> really. >> senator klobuchar, it's willie geist. good to see you this morning. >> thanks, willie. >> the goal is to find out if there was a link between president donald trump's campaign and russia. you heard the testimony yesterday. you heard jim clapper, former national director of intelligence, explicitly say he has not seen evidence of collusion th t caveat that he has not seen the fbi's investigation. is there anything you heard yesterday or anything you've learned along the way that proves to you that there was collusion between the trump campaign and russia? >> we really have two goals, one to get to the bottom of the facts. senate intelligence committee is doing that as well. director clapper said he's not

part of the fbi investigation. >> right. >> and listening to secretary rice reminded me of this again. our democracy is fragile and it's incredibly important to this country. and we cannot let a foreign power influence it. so a lot of this is how do we move forward? what does the media do when they're given cyber attack material from a foreign country? what do campaigns do to each other when they do that? we need an independent commission, at least, willie, to get to the bottom of the rules of the road going forward. >> you're not prepared to say you've seen collusion? >> i believe the investigation is going on right now. there are very, we will call, strange and telling facts that the chairman of the trump campaign had to step down because of ties to russia, that we have, in general flynn, someone that, despite all these warnings, including reported yesterday from president obama, that they decided to keep him on and hire him. despite these ties to russia. flynn called up the russians the

day that obama announced that he was expanding the sanctions. this just isn't a casual contact. so, again, i'm glad that this is being looked into, in detail. but i'm focused on how we prevent this from happening in the future. one party, one candidate. next time it will be the other. >> switching topics here. last week, on the front pages of the paper and on every tv, all these guys talking about their success on the health care bill in the house. what was your reaction to the gaering and what is going to happen to that health bill now that it's ithe senate? >> yeah. that was a lot of high fives in the rose garden there. and my first reaction, of course, was this is a really hard topic. there's a lot of americans that are hanging on every word here in terms of changes that i think must be made with the affordable care act. but that's not what this is. this was just a celebration of a bill that basically takes away health care for millions of

americans and doesn't make the kind of fixes that we need. i think we need to do something about pharmaceutical prices, including negotiation under medicare part d, a bill i have with john mccain, help with the exchanges and make improvements with that. delivery system reform. this was a big bill when it was passed and big bills need changes and reform but that is not what happened over in the house last week. and i don't think they should be celebrating taking health care away from millions of americans. >> yeah. that's probably a good place to start. senator amy klobuchar, thanks for being on the show. >> good to be here. we'll talk to senator bill cassidy, who says his passes the jimmy kimmel test. we'll explain that and speak live to the ranking member on the house committee on intelligence, congressman adam schiff.

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welcome back to "morning joe." another black eye for air travel. chaos erupted at a florida airport when several spirit airlines flights were canceled. cell phone video captured at ft. lauderdale airport yesterday as airport security can be seen confronting angry passenger, in some cases forcibly restraining them. security apparently pinning one passenger on the ground as the commotion of fellow travelers fills the terminal. and in this video, you can see some passengers and security in a scuffle. it aegan after nine flights out of the aport we canceled. spirit airlines is negotiating with its pilots. >> where is this? >> ft. lauderdale. >> filed a lawsuit against its pilots say they go refused to

fly, resulting in cancellations. the airlines released a statement that says, in part, we are shocked and saddened to see the videos what took place at ft. lauderdale airport this evening. this is a result of unlawful labor activity by some spirit pilots designed to disrupt spirit operations for our customers. >> those didn't look like pilots. >> it's the result of pilots that didn't show up for the flights and then you have angry passengers. meanwhile, the union representing the spirit pilots released a statement that reads, in part, for more than two years, spirit pilots have been in negotiations for a contract that provides industry-standard compensation. however, the company, while generating above industry average profit marginins, is proposing a compensation package that would cement its pilots at the bottom of the industry. >> i didn't pay attention from the beginning of the story. pilots didn't show up. >> yeah, and you had canceled flight. >> all of this is happening for a reason. i understand the airlines need to make a profit. obviously, there was

deregulation in the 1980s. they've been jamming more and more seats on airplanes. they've been allowing people to be canceled and kicked off. we're going to have to out a wa better regulate this industry. that's coming from a small government conservative, but this is going to continue and this is what happens when you jam too many people on to a flight, you over book. there has to be a real passenger's bill of rights and not the sham they passed a couple of years ago. >> we have with all of the videos including the united video, we're reached a tipping point. this is an industry ripe for disruption. that's the good news. the bad news is it's really hard. richard branson has tried it, got a lot of money, big name, incredibly innovative. it's a hard nut to crack. >> also the reason why they are

making a profit is because they are jamming people on it. >> commercial air flight in america is a constant aggravation 64 hours a day, 7 days a week. >> for the most part it's miserable other than our friends at jetblue. >> jetblue is great. >> delta. >> no, i don't like delta. >> delta is better than most. >> no. >> no? somebody had an experience. >> yesterday. >> figured? >> what happened did they not put a crown on your head? >> my head was too big. they saw "saturday night live." >> by the way -- >> needed a box for my head. >> was ann mad at you? >> no. no. no. >> i have to say, that got the biggest laugh. >> she hired a personal trainer for me kept looking at bobby moynihan. if you look like that, you're going to get in shape. >> more comments about you and willie. >> i'm going to work with mikey day up there.

he's going to grow into the character, let's just say. still ahead, we have much more on yesterday's testimony from sally yates, the acting attorney general who was fired by the trump administration just days after warning the white house about general michael flynn. we'll talk about that timing. "morning joe" back in a moment. the former president said don't hire this guy. he's clearly compromised. he's lied to the vice president. and he keeps him on and he lets him be in all these classified phone calls -- he lets him talk with putin. the president of the united states and the national security adviser sit in the oval office and discuss this with putin because you ask yourself, why wouldn't you fire a guy who did this? and all i can think of is that held say, well, we've got

all these other people in the administration who have had contacts. that may be why it took him 18 days until it came public to get rid of mike flynn, who was a danger to this republic. care to comment? >> i don't think i'm going to touch that, senator. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ sfx: engine revving ♪ (silence) ♪ whether it's connecting one of or bringing wifi to 65,000 fans. campuses.

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president obama made it known that he wasn't exactly a fan of general flynn's, so the question that you have to ask yourself really is if president obama was truly concerned about general flynn, why didn't he suspend general flynn's security clearance, which they had just reapproved months earlier? additionally, why did the obama administration let general flynn go to russia for a paid speaking engagement and receive a fee. there were steps he could have taken more than a person that had bad blood. >> i can't speak to specifics of how it was done with general flynn. i know what i went through as a political appointee twice in a republican and democratic administration and the vetting process for either a political appointee or someone working in the white house is far, far more invasive and far, far more thorough than a standard tssci clearance process. >> he fired him. >> they fired him. >> they fired him.

>> that's the way it works. >> you're fired. that's when they have to go like down to the bottom of trump tower and get in that cheesy car you put him in and then they drive off into cheese land. and then they come back and bring that cheese -- like all around -- >> okay. the white house -- >> no, they fired him. come on. come on. come on, sean spicer -- >> i can't even look -- no, don't even because i might, i just might get in the car and drive out the driveway. >> drive in the driveway. >> no, kellyanne, shawn spicer, it's becoming close. it's already there, actually. i'm just having a hard time bringing myself to say it because he is the white house press secretary but he literally every time i hear him talk it's painful and it's usually not true. anyone disagree? >> they fired him, willie geist. why didn't they do anything? they got rid of him. barack obama, nice to see the

44th president of the united states back. you get the news yesterday morning, a source close to barack obama whose initials are bho say i warned him. told him not to hire him. >> come on. >> extraordinarily close to barack obama. probably the president himself. the question for the white house itself, given the fact that flynn was fired, given the fact that president obama spoke two days after the election to donald trump, given the fact that sally yates went and spoke to white -- >> how could they even -- >> why did it take them 18 days the time that sally yates warned him that he was ripe for black mail, what happened in 18 days? other than a washington post story. >> good god. >> other than the possibility that you have a president that's not a very good manager. i've hired a lot of people. you get those kind of warnings. obviously not at the national security level. >> can you imagine getting a warning like that and still moving forward? that's your biggest problem. >> you know, everybody's backing away from him now but mike barnacle -- >> we said it on the air.

>> they all fiercely defended general flynn. they didn't need sally yates's warning. everybody close to trump was warning donald trump and everybody around donald trump that flynn was bad news before the election, after the election and before sally yates's warning and donald trump was his fiercest advocate. fought like hell for him. more than anybody else. let everybody around him know that flynn was the one person that was going to be next to him and everybody around trump fell in line and talked about how great general flynn was. >> how flynn travels with him. >> the chorus -- >> calms him down. >> -- of praise for general flynn around this president was unanimous. >> well, general flynn was a warmup act for donald trump during much of the campaign. that's part of it. this is what happens when loyalty crosses with paranoia. so we all know donald trump is tremendously loyal to people who

he perceives as being loyal to him. the paranoia comes from barack obama and the white house saying, beware of general flynn. is this a political thing because he was fired? but the facts of this case are such that sean spicer was wrong on two accounts. one, you have to get a renewed security clearance if you're going to be national security adviser. it's a jump up. that's one thing. so the obama -- >> it's wrong on a million counts every time he gets up there. >> the second thing is, i think, i'm fairly sure, i've been told by a couple of people, he never told anyone about the russian trips when he was still on the government payroll. >> he told them about the trips but didn't tell them he took money from r.t., that was the distinction. >> and he was still warned. warnings were there. sean spicer has an impossible job. >> i can't -- >> that's great. he has an impossible job. you know what you have when you have an impossible job, i can't do it. that guy had a good reputation. it is now ruined. also with us paul --

>> we have an associate editor. >> david ignatius, what's your biggest take away from yesterday? >> the over used word yesterday, dramatic testimony. this really was dramatic. i think what really hit me was sally yates saying two things. first, the underlying conduct of michael flynn in his conversations with ambassador kessliak, the fact that he talked about sanctions against russia on the very day when the obama administration was imposing new sanctions, that that was troubling. and, second, this very strong language that the justice department thought there was an urgent danger that flynn could be compromised, that he could be black mailed, that she wanted the white house to act right away because she thought the russians can use this now. i thought it was pretty stunning to hear her say that. >> let's actually show that. let's go right to sally yates. >> we began our meeting telling

him that there had been press accounts of statements from the vice president and others that related conduct that mr. flynn had been involved in that we knew not to be the truth. the underlying conduct that general flynn had engaged in was problematic in and of itself. we were concerned that the american people had been misled about the underlying conduct and what general flynn had done and additionally, that we weren't the only ones that knew all of this, that the russians also knew about what general flynn had done. th russians also knew that genel flynn had misled the vice president and others. not only did we believe that the russians knew this but they likely had proof of this. that created a situation where they could be black mailed.

>> she believed sincerely that general flynn could be a target of black mail given that he had exposed himself that way and also that he had allowed the vice president go out and tell untruths. what's your best guess about that 18 day gap, david, between the time sally yates told them and the time general flynn was dismissed? >> that's really the central mystery now, like the mystery of why donald trump didn't respond to the direct warning there president obama. don't hire this man. it's not wise. sally yates takes this extraordinary step, goes to the white house counsel, brings someone from the national security division. these are the people who handle the most secret things in our government and gives this warning. this is urgent. and then 18 days pass. why? the only answer i think is that donald trump was trying to make up his mind what to do, and what

do we know that happened in that period? first, sally yates, the person who had brought this bad news was fired. she was fired nominally for another reason, because she resisted the president's travel ban, but she was fired. and in addition, the president ended up defending mike flynn when he finally decided it was time for him to go. so what was it that was limiting trump' reaction? were there issues of his own that he was strugglin to think through? did he see this as a democratic attack on him? we just don't know, but i think those are now the central questions. what was trump thinking? >> it's interesting -- >> lie after lie after lie, that's what he was thinking. >> it's interesting that donald trump referred to the investigation of general flynn as a witch hunt, which explains that even after he has all of this information, even after he fires him himself he is still for some reason trying to defend

this man who did things that were indefensible. >> it does raise questions about the amount of money that trump has probably gotten funded through russia for all of his personal interests, but the bigger issue is every lie chips away at this presidency and every untruth that sean spicer brings to the table stuttering and bumbling because he's so uncomfortable with himself. i know my little meltdowns make you all laugh, they're always right. they're always right. i'm always right when i -- i'm telling you right now, these guys are going to find themselves literally fumbling on their own lies to the point where it brings them down and it's going to start with the press secretary but it's going to end up on the press's dident desk. too many lies. >> i don't know what he was struggling with, i don't know that he was struggling. i don't know what was going on in the 18 days and it may turn out there was a lot more going on than we know about. at the base of it, what is obviously completely evident is you have a president who's not

really competent in the sense of -- >> totally incompetent. >> -- how to deal with information like this and how to make decisions and that he just -- he just followed the loyalty path without ever singularly questioning or being willing to do anything about all of these warnings from serious people. >> david ignatius, do you not hear the same thing i've heard a couple of times. you live in washington so you might hear it more frequently. one of the problems, one of the central problems with this issue and other issues in the white house is the total chaotic nature around the president. there's no strong chief of staff. there's no strong voices -- >> no strong nobody. >> -- to give him direction, advice, counsel that he adheres to. this is what happens? >> mike, i do feel that, but i felt that especially at the time that these events were happening. the white hou is somewhat chaotic now. it was really chaotic back in

january, and people with knives were out. flynn himself was jockeying for position. i went in to interview flynn in this period between when sally yates had delivered her warning and when he was fired and he was struggling to defend himself explaining his plans for the nsc, trying to hold on to that job. so i think the white house, to be honest, seems somewhat better organized today than it did then. the president somewhat more confident of what he's doing, but this mystery endures and i just -- the president tried to undermine sally yates's credibility in a tweet yesterday before she testified. very defensive reaction. i just don't think that's continuing to be a wise strategy for the white house. this is going to play out. it's serious. the language she used made clear there are legal issues the justice is still weighing. still ahead, congressman adam schiff reacts to the testimony yesterday on michael

flynn's ties to russia's ambassador. we'll see if it lines up with his findings in the house intelligence committee. plus, senator bill cassady is outlining the health care. >> that would be kind of unique. >> that would be -- yeah. that would be. >> just hold the president. >> to his word? >>. >> to what the president promised the american people. >> you can't. it's like dot to dot. you can't. >> the senate audit call it trump care, take everything the president promised on the campaign trail -- >> and play dot to dot with it. >> and pass it. >> but first here's bill karins with a check on the forecast. bill. >> this forecast will be easier than all of that. let's talk about what happened in denver first. if you haven't seen the pictures of the large hail, they did some damage. some people were smart. they tucked their vehicles under bridges to protect them. they knew this was a big old hail storm. here's what some of the damage looked like when it was all said and done. windshields? well, trashed across many areas of north denver.

you can see the hail stones, the size of them. look at the dents, too. a lot of repairs to be done. how are we looking today? same areas. running stagnant weather pattern. what you had yesterday is likely what you'll see today from the denver area south wards, new mexico, texas. 2 million people at risk. large hail. wensz we push these storms into oklahoma and kansas. 1.5 million people at risk. large hail and damaging winds. not too many tornadoes. now for the miserable stuff in the great lakes and northeast. it's not that horrible. when you look at the calendar you want it to feel and look like may, not early spring. our storm is still lingering and bringing that cold air down from canada. today only 58 in cleveland, 62 in new york, 67 in raleigh. just to the south, a huge division. 90s in florida. it stays chilly too all through the northeast. unfortunately for mother's day it looks like we could have rain

up here in the northeast. more on that for the days ahead. nice day for you today. l.a., san francisco. unusually cool in phoenix at 74. new york city looking at sunshine mixed with some clouds as you go throughout your day. still cool for this time of year, but at least it's not raining finally. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. ♪ ♪ david. what's going on? oh hey! ♪ that's it? yeah. ♪ everybody two seconds! ♪ "dear sebastian, after careful consideration of your application, it is with great pleasure that we offer our congratulations on your acceptance..." through the tuition assistance program, every day mcdonald's helps more people go to college. it's part of our commitment to being america's best first job. ♪

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aliens into the united states would be detrimental into the united states he may by proclamation and for such period as he shall deem necessary suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or non-immigrants or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem appropriate. would yo agr that is broad statutory authorization. >> would. i'm also familiar with an additional provision that says no person shall receive preference because of race, nationality or place of birth. that i believe was promulgated after the statute that you just quoted. >> in the over 200 years of the department of justice history are you aware of any instance in which the department of justice has formally approved the legality of a policy and three days later the attorney general has directed the department not to follow that policy and to defy that policy? >> i'm not, but i'm also not aware of a situation where the

office of legal counsel was advised not to tell the attorney general about it until after it was over. >> thank you, ms. yates. >> whoa. whoa. >> thank you, ms. yates. ouch. >> those were two curveballs that she put over left field fence. two setups. do not set it up like perry mason unless you know the answer. >> touch them all. >> going up. all right. >> they were trying to set her up as someone who acted out of politics. that travel ban is a completely separate issue. >> they just punched him in the nose. >> he should have known. it's sally yates. that's just -- that's just bad theater. that's just bad politics. he should have known that sally yates was going to hit his hanging curveball 470 feet. >> yeah. >> that was just too -- you could see while he was setting it up. no, don't do it. don't do that. no.

no. no. just talk to her. put her -- give her, you know, an intentional walk. take the signal. is it the same thing this year? >> that one didn't break. that was a hanging curveball. >> it hung up there. >> it wasn't just senator cruz. there were other senators who tried to frame her as someone who acted out of politics, who acted out of partisanship. she cited line by line the law under which she acted. she believed that the travel ban is unlawful. >> again, importantly, she cited and she cited correctly the provision of t law tt was implemented after the section that he talked about. >> it's also something that ted cruz has done more often than not. he has an intellectual contempt because he thinks he's the smartest person. >> what's worse is he shows it. it's obvious he has an intellectual contempt. >> david, the take away from yesterday, what's the headline? >> i think the headline is that

this is more trouble for the white house even than they expected. >> in what way? >> the mystery of why donald trump did not act when he was given warnings about mike flynn's behavior is now a central question. it goes to why did he lie to why did the president act as he did? i think that's a tougher focus. it goes to what did trump know about flynn's conversations? what was his conversation back in december? and i think those are the next set of issues people are going to focus on. coming up on "morning joe," the pentagon considers stepping up america's military presence in afghanistan. can a few more thousand troops do what others couldn't? david ignatius weighs in on that.

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president trump's top military and foreign advisers have recommended sending several more thousand troops to afghanistan. this according to a report from the washington post. the plan which would also authorize the pentagon and not the white house to set troop levels apparently still needs to

be approved by the president and he is expected to make a final decision before may 25th, the nato meeting in brussels. it also echos what the top american commander in afghanist afghanistan, general john nicholson told congress back in february, that he needed thousands more troops to break what he called a stalemate. >> david ignatius, years ago we had pretty heated debates around this table about whether president obama, the new president, should triple the number of troops in afghanistan. then we were complaining that we had already been in that war for eight years. this would hold us there for even longer. we're 16 years in now. the generals on the ground say theyeed the support. are we just going to have to have a reset in thinking and look at afghanistan as our new korea, that we're going to be there for 50 years? >> this is now america's longest war, and it falls to president trump to think is there a way to break the stalemate that

commander general nicholson has described. 3,000 more troops, which is what they're discussing, doesn't seem like a force that's going to accomplish what 100,000 american troops, which was our peak number back in 2011, couldn't accomplish. i'm truck by the fact that general h.r. mcmaster who really struggled with this afghanistan problem as much as anyone in the military when he was there under general petraeus is now going to be the key decision maker. it's said that he feels that this augmentation of troops makes sense. i think it's a tough decision for president trump. he talks about wanting a winning strategy, but very few people who look at afghanistan think there's a win other than finally getting some sort of diplomatic process and coalition that draws the taliban in. >> mike, we've been there for 16 years. and the afghanistan army still

can't fight for themselves. we're going to have to make the decision. i mean, apparently culturally they are incapable of doing it because they're too divided, too many tribes or something. if the president puts more troops in, we're going to have to realize that we've got -- we're going to be there for 50 years. >> well, the issue of 3,000 troops -- >> and it stops being a war and it starts being an occupation. >> it might bus tres the urban areas. but, david, one of the points here it seems, perhaps the second most dangerous country in the world is pakistan, and our relationship with pakistan and our troops in afghanistan, that seems to be a never ending issue. what can be done about pakistan? >> bolstering pakistan so it's more confident, so it doesn't seek to use afghanistan as a kind of defensive reserve has

been the biggest puzzle for american commanders. jim nicholson is as good a commander as we've had there. i first met him ten years ago almost when he was in the jilalibad area. he knows the country. the afghan government and the army as you said just has not gotten sufficient traction in the country. so that leaves you with the necessity as the obama administration concluded of seeking a political conclusion with the pakistani's help. how do you make them confident enough? that was the question. five years ago, ten years ago it was a question and now it's up on president trump's plate. >> coming up on "morning joe." >> we have to fulfill president trump's package. we get an american plan, not democrat, not republican, that's where we need to be.

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and yates were excellent witnesses. i thought she did the right thing by going to the white house general counsel knowing what she did about the flynn russian ambassador conversation saying you have a problem with flynn because he could be compromised. she did absolutely the right thing, but the bottom line here is i thought sally yates did the right thing in terms of her role in all of this. she did the right thing. she's incredibly credible. from a republican point of view

i found miss yates to be incredibly credible. i thought what she did in terms of handling this, she didn't go to the press, she went to the white house. i think mr. mccann seemed to take it seriously. we'll see what happens here. >> senator lindsey graham speaking yesterday with greta here on msnbc right after the hearing with sally yates and james clapper that he chaired. joining us now ranking member of the house select committee on intelligence, adam schiff of california and here on set former under secretary of state rick stengel. good to have you both on board. >> congressman, what was your take away from yesterday's hearing? what was the headline? >> well, the headline to me was not only was sally yates concerned not only about the lying, but also the underlying conduct. i thought that was very significant. not just the deception but what he was being deceptive about. it also was, you know, the first real confirmation we had of just how long the president waited before he felt he needed to act

and even then after 18 days it was only the fact that the deception became public that forced his hand. and obviously that has people asking why. was this conduct, this underlying conduct that so troubled sally yates something that the president was knowing of, approving of? these are some of the questions left unanswered, but i agree with lindsey graham. i thought she was very credible, very powerful. i also really appreciate something that lindsey said at the outset of the hearing. there ought to be something like article five of nato that applies that when a foreign power attacks our democracy, whether it helps democrats or hurts democrats or republicans, we ought to ban together and reject that foreign interference. >> congressman, it's willie geist. what's the status of your investigation and how did anything you heard yesterday in that open forum perhaps change, influence, or shape the way you look at this question?

>> well, we are proceeding now i think full speed ahead. we are sending out letters to witnesses to invite them to come. we are requesting documents. we're scheduling hearings. we're in conversation about our next open hearing which was to include some of the same witnesses and may include some of the same witnesses who testified yesterday. i think what happened yesterday greatly contributes to the public understanding of what the investigation is about and i think it really underscores why we can't simply conduct all of this in closed session and sometime down the road throw open the doors and say, here's our report, public, you need to believe it. it's going to be important to keep the public with us as we go along so they know why we're concerned, what we're looking at, who we're talking to to the maximum degree we can share that. obviously there are things we can't. it did help shed light. >> based on your investigation so far, any comments, thoughts,

observations on the role of the white house counsel tomm mcbegan in this issue and the 18-day delay between him finding out or being told about what happened and finally general flynn's departure? >> well, you know, it's very difficult to evaluate based on the testimony that we had just yesterday, which i think was the most fullsome account of what i had heard of what was going on in those meetings between sally yates and the white house. one thing that did strike me was when she testified a number of times about the white house counsel asking, you know, why is the justice department concerned about one official lying to another. in one level i suppose you could understand the question is what are the justice department's equities here, but at another level it ought to be quite obvious and i'm surprised that the top lawyer for the president would have to ask why the

justice department would be concerned about this particularly when the underlying conduct was discussed. it seems to me that that would be very apparent or ought to be to the president's lawyer. so that was the most striking part of his role from the testimony yesterday. >> rick stengel, you were the tip of the spear for getting america's message out across the globe at the state department. your job, talk about the impact ofea hdlines across the globe saying that one government official is telling the top white house lawyer that their top national security adviser is open to black mail from russia? >> you know, it's a disturbing headline in one sense, but i have to say, i looked at the bright side of this in the sense that you have a career government official, united states, you have one -- the branch of congress asking for testimony -- >> sally yates. >> sally yates. >> selected by right wing

republican bob barr. >> right. >> not a liberal democrat. >> speaking truth to power honestly. saying she did the very thing we asked her when she was testifying for confirmation hearing. would you contraduct the president of the united states if you think he's doing something unlawful. she did it. i think in some sense part this have is a great message for other countries around the world to look at the balance of power here in the united states and to see somebody standing up like that. >> and to have that question actually come, alex tells me, from jeff sessions. >> well, and -- >> what goes around comes around. >> well, in a good way. >> in a great way, yes. can i ask you something else? we were talking to condoleezza rice about this before. there have been a lot of challenges, a lot of people bought what was it, the book, "the road to tyranny." ? >> the hyac book? >> no, not "the road to surfdom." anyway, a lot of people

concerned about the first 100 days that this president was pushing and his advisors were pushing to, as bannon said, tear down the state. challenge checks and balances. challenge the most basic assumptions that madison and hamilton gave us back in 1789. it's a pretty good message to the world. our systems have been checked and our sis stems have worked. >> are working. >> i agree with that. condoleezza rice was right. you have this administrion that's undermining the idea. that's terrible public diplomacy. >> back to the investigation. where does it stand. within the next month.

>> that's to punish. that's the behavior in 2012. what's your goal. what should be that goal. >> i don't think it's as simple as the russians wanted to punish it. that was a motivation for putin. that wasn't the motivation in france. really i think it's much more substantial than an attack on one person or even helping donald trump. it really is an assault on democracy, democratic institutions around the world, the weakening of democracy. i agree that any walking away from our historic role in championing a democracy would be a tragic mistake for us and portray a proud legacy. we remain the world's hope in terms of the liberties that democracy provides.

to worship whom you will. i think that is the primary motivation. but so i have. we're all a bunch of hypocrites. >> bringing those witnesses in. tohink about what the situation is. it's underway.

>> the totalitarianism. we talked about the united states. pitch forks. >> the judicial nal institutions took somebody else. the south korean election with the likely progressive mr. moon. somebody who actually believes

in these -- in the liberal world order but actually wants to question some of the varieties of the institution. we're seeing candidates that span both conventional thinking and also being outside of the process which is an interesting new kind of line now and an anti-trump line i would say. >> all right. congressman adam schiff, thank you very much. >> thank you. now to republican senator bill cassidy of louisiana. he's a physician turned senator and has his own ideas as to how to reform health care. >> senator, the senator has a very radical concept here. senator, it's so radical i wonder if it will catch on in washington, d.c. you want a health care bill that actually keeps the promises that the president made during the campaign. tell us about it. >> which ones? >> absolutely. the president was very vocal, repeated over and over what i call his contract with the voter, and i think he's

passionate about it. we have to take care of those with pre-existing conditions. he wanted to cover as many as obamacare. eliminating mandates. people hate the obamacare mandates and lastly he wants to lower premiums. i got two communications yesterday from families paying over $20,000 a year for their insurance and having family deduktdibles of 13,000. the president cares about that if we fulfill that contract with the american people, we'll do a good job. >> senator, do you believe -- you don't believe that -- let me ask a leading question this way, that you can cover as many as were covered under obamacare if you cut medicaid by $800 billion? >> so, no. coverage matters. rich lowrie is a conservative columnist for national review and he says coverage matters. if someone is lower income, you need those dollars to cover that person. i will point out though some folks can ask can you cover as many without a mandate. under the cassidy/collins plan

or patient freedom act we allow states an option to enroll folks. those folks who get a credit sufficient for their annual premium so you're getting the young immortal who doesn't sign up kind of automatically enrolled. they can call up and say, i don't want it, let me out. doing so you bring stability to the individual market and you begin to lower the premiums. that's what we need to do. >> senator, it's willie geist. good to see you this morning. you touched on pre-existing conditions. one of the things that outraged people was they said people with pre-existing conditions will be covered under this plan. the distinction is that their rates may go way up to the point where they can no longer afford them. as a politician, as a physician can you explain how that would work in the house bill? >> i won't explain the house bill because there's assumptions there that are kind of complex to go through, but i will point out the way to take care of pre-existing conditions is to

take the few that are sick and put them in a very large plan where there are many other who are healthier. again, the cassidy/collins does that by our feature of states putting you in. not a mandate. like medicare. i turn 65, i'm on medicare. not a mandate. i can call up and say i don't want it. otherwise i'm in and my health brings down the premiums for those not so healthy. >> let me ask you the question that several others would not answer the question. does your plan and senator collins' plan offer a federal guarantee that people with pre-existing conditions will still be covered? >> absolutely. because under our plan everybody the same age is charged the same amount. and obviously older people cost more. you might get charged a little bit more. on the other hand, the credit you would receive if you were eligible for a credit would be commensurate with your age. let me point out one more thing. conservatives have always said we should equalize the tax

treatment between those who get their insurance through their employer and those who don't. with this tax credit we equalize that treatment,hat tax treatment of employer based versus non-ployer based. that's a long-term conservative goal and we accomplish that goal. >> senator, rick stengel. quick question. where do you see the senate going from here? if you have to handicap your bill versus other bills, where do you see yourself coming out? >> couple of things about that, rick. first, it depends whether democrats get engaged. whenever they say, i wasn't called. don't be passive. come together. approach mitch mcconnell with an idea that will lower those premiums for the folks who need it. don't be passive, number one. number two, if we're going to fulfill president trump's contract to the american voter, i think the only way to get there is through a bill if not cassidy/collins, a bill a lot like cassidy/collins. i'd like to think we fulfill

that contract. i think the president is serious. if we fulfill it it will look like cassidy/collins. >> just to be clear the house bill does not fulfill those promises, does it? >> no. if you look at the cbo score, you can dispute it, even if it's not as dramatic as it appears to be still does not fulfill those criteria. on the other hand i think cassidy/collins does. >> thank you so much. senator bill cassidy. greatly appreciate it. >> rick stengel, thank you so much as well. >> that's a very interesting kind of louisiana republican, very conservative and moderate republican from maine coming together putting this -- putting this bill together. it would be great if -- >> either one of them were on the committee to broker the bill. neither one of them are. >> yeah, that's too bad. >> find a democrat. maybe joe manchin, bring joe in.

bring another democrat in, claire mccaskill from new jersey. she's a moderate democrat. >> could actually break -- >> ideological thing. >> it has to be. >> susan collins was the insurance regulator in maine prior to becoming a united states senator. she knows just a bit about health insurance. >> a smidge. >> let's look at the first two goals. donald trump promised this and i guess donald trump forgot that he promised this, but all pre-existing conditions are covered. here's a federal guarantee. that was a promise that donald trump made. also, cover as many people as obamacare. that was a promise that donald trump made. he said, you know, we will have as many people covered. so why can't these two and a couple of democrats get together and start building out? >> you'd like to think they could. i will say it's always good to listen to a senator who's been a physician and who has lived through this and knows how insurance works and knows where the holes in the system are.

so hopefully that's a start of a building block for them. it's pretty clear whatever they pass in the senate, if they do, will not look like what came out of the house. >> still ahead, the so-called fear gauge in the to its lowest in more than 20 years. we will bring in billionaire media mogul sam zell for his take on the trump economy. keep it right here on "morning joe." i no longe . wondering, what if? i let go of all those feelings. because i am cured with harvoni. harvoni is a revolutionary treatment for the most common type of chronic hepatitis c. it's been prescribed to more than a quarter million people. and is proven to cure up to 99% of patients who have had no prior treatment with 12 weeks. certain patients can be cured with just 8 weeks of harvoni. before starting harvoni, your doctor will test to see if you've ever had hepatitis b, which may flare up and cause

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the founding fathers understood that executive authority had to be constrained and they were determined to do it. they built a congress and now we have 535 people. we have courts that will strike down the president's decrees. we have governors, by the way, 50 of them, and state legislatures and i think our president today is learning that those constraints are real, that whatever you say in an election campaign, those constraints are going to be there, and by the way, this is a president who has never even sniffed government before. never been a part of government. so maybe it was a bit of a surprise you have all these independent power centers, it's not like running a company. >> he said it's harder than he thought. >> it looks easy from the outside. i've served presidents who were in and around government and i think even they found, particularly george w. bush, found the constraints of the presidency to be different than even he might have anticipated.

>> that was former secretary of state condi rice on "morning joe," just a small part of our wide-sweeping, riveting interview with her, which you can watch on our website at joe.msnbc.com. joining us billionaire real estate investor sam zell, his book out today, "am i being too subtle?" >> i love the kover. >> straight talk from a business rebel. >> thank you so much for being with us, mr. zell. love to begin with what you said earlier today on cnbc, which was that you think we have an administration now that is pro business and america has gone from anti- to pro business. explain that. >> well, i think all you have to do is lookt the cabinet for eight years. e cabinet had, i don't know, 4%, 5% business, you know, influence of some kind. now it's 50 some odd percent. i think what i said on cnbc this morning was, bill clinton's motto was, it's the economy, stupid. and if the economy is what

governs everything, then we have to have pro-business people in the white house encouraging the growth of the economy and the creation of jobs. >> do you think that's why the markets are going up and unemployment rate is going down? >> i think the markets are going up because there's a lot of enthusiasm. i think unemployment is going down as much as the fact that we're under employing a lot of people. a lot of people with degrees are waiting on tables. so yes, employment has increased dramatically, but not the quality. >> they're under employed. talk about the book, why did you write the book and what's the big idea? >> what's the subtlety issue? >> the subtlety issue is very simple. >> yeah. >> i've taken great pride on my career in saying that nobody has ever met with me stops and says, what do you think he meant. i take -- to me, the fact that i'm communicating clearly is

what it's all about. and delivering a message. as far as writing the book is concerned, lots of people have encouraged me for years. i kept kind of talking about it. and then one day i just said, you know, i really ought to do this. and it's not really an autobiography. it's really a lessons learned, and examples. >> what do you think one of the tips you have in there is don't take yourself too seriously, which i think is great advice for anybody in any business. would you say that to president trump as well? do you think he takes himself too seriously. >> absolutely. nobody laughs any more than i do. no one is the first one to laugh than me. by virtue of having that kind of a mental set, i think you can generate a lot more confidence and cooperation from everybody else. >> what's another tip that's important? >> i think conventional wisdom is probably one of the worst things conceivable.

you know, look at the forbes 400. except for the people who have inherited the money, everybody else went left when conventional wisdom went right. and i've spent my whole life listening to people tell me, i don't understand and going ahead and doing it anyway. >> yeah. >> what did you learn from the disaster that was the tribune. purchase? >> i learned that as strong and mighty as i might think i am, reality sometimes takes over. we analyze the investment assumption of a 6% suppression in revenue and we got 30% the first month. if you get that kind of, you know, dim mun in this in revenue -- diminution in revenue and an operating leverage you have no chance. >> a lot of people have bought media companies that have to do

with print that get into it and say boy, this is a lot tough per. >> harder. >> what made the difference? what made the difference in your life, why did you have the type of personality that gave you the confidence to go left when everybody else was going right? to jump off the cliff, so to speak, where you're not sure what's at the bottom? >> i think the answer has always been the same. nobody told us we couldn't. never -- and never really accepted limitations. i spent my whole life testing my limits. i think it was confucius who said the definition of a is schmuck is someone who reaches his goals. >> you still haven't reached your goal? >> never, never. what could be more depressing than reaching your goals? >> exactly. >> i love that. i love that. that's a good way to end the show. >> confucius. >> so much i still haven't learned. >> thank you so much. >> sam zell, thank you.

>> the book "am i being too subtle? straht talk from a business rebel." sam zell, thank you so much for being on the show. >> what a way to wrap it up. >> good luck with the book. >> that does it for us. you have to hold on one second. >> okay. >> okay. >> stephanie ruhle picks up the coverage. he wants to lead. >> he does. >> right now. >> hi, sam. all right. hi there, i'm stephanie ruhle. this morning much to cover, starting with firing back. president trump blasting congress for the russia investigation as nbc reports president obama warned trump about mike flynn and former acting attorney general sally yates hammered home her warning. >> you don't want your national security adviser compromised with the russians. >> in the line of fire, the 13 male senators charged with crafting their health care bill meet today, as republican house members meet fury in their home district. one congressman storms out of an